Pima Air & Space Museum – Right next door to Davis-Monthan Air Force Base, Pima Air & Space Museum has more than 300 exhibits, including this rare Boeing YC-14 which was designed to land at speeds as low as 99 mph, according to the museum website.

Museum of Flight, Seattle – Seattle's Museum of Flight boasts a Lockheed M-21 Blackbird, built to support a CIA spy program, it is "the fastest and highest flying air-breathing production aircraft ever built," according to the museum.

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The first jet-powered Air Force One – This Boeing 707-120 -- code named SAM (Special Air Missions) 970 -- is the first presidential jet to serve as Air Force One, according to the museum. Previous Air Force One planes had been propeller driven. The museum says SAM 970's passengers included presidents Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon as well as former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger and ex-Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev.

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The last Concorde – This aircraft ended an era in aviation history. It flew the final Concorde commercial flight, when the supersonic fleet was retired in 2003. While making its journey to the museum, the British Airways jet set a New York-to-Seattle speed record of 3 hours, 55 minutes, and 12 seconds, the museum says.

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Edwards Air Force Base, California – The region surrounding California's Edwards Air Force Base north of Los Angeles has served to develop and test so many aircraft it's been dubbed the Aerospace Capital of America. This stealthy F-117 Nighthawk was decommissioned in 2008.

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Faster than sound – At Edwards, Chuck Yeager became the first person to pilot an aircraft faster than the speed of sound during level flight. The experimental Bell X-1 rocket plane broke the barrier in 1947 after being dropped from a modified B-29 bomber.

C.R. Smith Museum – The Flagship Knoxville -- the shiny silver centerpiece of American Airlines' C.R. Smith Museum -- is about a 10-minute cab ride south of Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport.

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Fantasy of Flight – Looking for a really hands-on aviation thrill? Fantasy of Flight in Polk City, Florida, about 45 minutes southwest of Orlando, offers daredevils a chance to take the stick and fly a vintage Boeing Stearman PT-17. For the less ambitious, visitors can enjoy simply sitting in the cockpit of a World War II-era P51C Mustang.

Here's the thing -- aviation museums and other sites let us mere mortals approach the impossible.

We get to see, and sometimes touch, historic artifacts that were designed to move at blazing fast speeds. For most of us, it's the closest we can come to catching a lightning bolt.

Some of the most complicated and formerly top secret machines ever imagined have become monuments to motion in communities across America. The places where these machines were born and pushed to their limits have become hallowed ground. How can you not want to check them out?

How can you NOT want to sit inside the supersonic airliner that made the last flight of the Concorde? Or see the spy plane dubbed the world's fastest "air-breathing" production aircraft? Or fly over the "boneyard" where military aircraft go to die? Or hang out where the "Right Stuff" flyboys risked death to break the sound barrier?

Hmmm ... this all doesn't sound too geeky. Does it?

For the record, I'm offering three possible signs you may be an aviation geek:

1. The photo snap. When I'm at the airport waiting to board, I often will snap a photo of my airliner through the gate window. I still don't know exactly why I do that. Maybe it's because every aircraft is unique. They come off the assembly line after years -- sometimes decades -- of painstaking research and development. Then, each one gets a tracking number and is closely followed throughout its career. There are apps and websites dedicated to tracking commercial airliners. Here's one that tracks aircraft flown by Delta Air Lines and dozens of other carriers.

2. ID please. When I board a plane, I look at the ID information engraved inside the aircraft door. Often times, etched into that metal plate, is the aircraft model and its date of birth. Great, now I know how old my plane is. Essential information. Oops, I'm holding up the line to board because I'm staring at the edge of the door. Sorry.

That's not really that geeky. Is it?

3. Watch 'n' gawk. Finally, don't tell anybody, but I've been known to visit small airports just to watch planes take off and land. This kind of behavior might be considered unusual, especially by those working in law enforcement.

And now for the five must-sees:

Aerospace capital

One place I've been meaning to get to for a while now is Edwards Air Force Base in California. The region around Edwards is kind of a magnet for aviation geeks. Some folks call it America's aerospace capital. In the high desert about an hour's drive north of Los Angeles, the area is packed full of aviation history.

It's a world punctuated by the occasional sonic boom, where some of America's most sophisticated and secret aircraft were developed including the stealthy F-117 Nighthawk, the F-104 Starfighter and the spy planes U-2 Dragon Lady and SR-71 Blackbird.

But most of all, the skies over Edwards became a deadly crucible that forged test-pilot greats such as Chuck Yeager.

For the few who don't know, Yeager's the first human to fly above Mach 1, the speed of sound.

"We'd been working our tail off on the airplane," Yeager told me during a phone interview. "When we did get it above Mach 1, obviously it made us very happy because we'd done something the rest of the world had been trying to do for years."

But Yeager and his team were ordered to keep the news quiet. Don't celebrate, they were told. It's classified. After the word leaked, "we started to celebrate somewhat," enjoying good times at a local test pilot watering hole. The Happy Bottom Riding Club and its owner, a woman stunt pilot named Pancho Barnes, gained fame in the film "The Right Stuff."

Six decades later, the celebrating continues at Happy Bottom -- at least at what's left of it. Destroyed by fire long ago, Yeager showed up at the building's ruins recently for an annual party thrown by locals to honor Pancho and the Cold War test pilots.

"They fix it all up and get some platforms and have a barbecue and most of the base comes out," Yeager said. "You go out there and you look at the swimming pool and you think back over the years and you think about Pancho and her husband, Mac McKendry, and some of the people who used to come out there. When I was flying the X-1, I was only getting $260 a month. The way we looked at it, duty was our guideline. That's the way we all flew in the military."

No public tours are available, but aerospace blogger Steve Harris posted some juicy details about his private visit to Skunk Works. For those who can't get in, Harris told me he only got to see "about 15 or 20 percent of what they could show us. Everything else is something that we don't even know exists." Outside the property, you can see Skunk Works' "big, giant, white, box-of-a-building" easily. The Skunk Works small gift shop is open to the public about a mile or so down the road.

Geeky? Perhaps.

Boneyard

Next, I'd have to travel from the birthplace of aviation icons to the place where they go to die.

That would be a hunk of desert near Tucson, Arizona, known as "The Boneyard."

The Air Force calls it 309 AMARG -- The 309th Aerospace Maintenance and Regeneration Group (formerly known as AMARC). It's basically the Pentagon's 2,600-acre parking lot for about 5,000 retired military aircraft.

It's sort of like a classic-car junkyard where all the town gearheads want to hang out and pull parts for their customized vehicles.

Access to this place is restricted, but nearby Pima Air & Space Museum offers tours of the Boneyard and -- for geeks with deep pockets -- several companies at Tucson's airport sell scenic Boneyard flyovers, says Chris Slack, who runs Boneyard website amarcExperience.com.

Geek bonus: The Boneyard served as a scene location for the 2009 film "Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen."

Seattle's Museum of Flight has some real beauties, including a unique Blackbird variant called the M-21. This particular Blackbird was able to launch unpiloted drones that were used for independent intelligence gathering.

Geek trivia: Although it was developed in the 1960s, the Blackbird still holds the record as the fastest "air-breathing" jet plane in history with a velocity more than 2,100 mph, three times the speed of sound.

It's really not that geeky -- OK? This thing is the world's fastest jetliner for God's sake.

We're talking about cruise speeds above 1,000 mph, compared with regular airliners, like Boeing's new 787, that poke along at under 600 mph.

Tail-dragger

Here's something a suspected aviation geek could do during a quick layover at Dallas-Fort Worth International: check out a painstakingly restored 72-year-old DC-3 airliner.

The Flagship Knoxville, the shiny silver centerpiece of American Airlines' C.R. Smith Museum, is about a 10-minute cab ride south of DFW. As everyone who's boarded one knows, the DC-3 is a tail-dragger.

The plane's tail is designed to sit on the ground, so when you step aboard the aircraft you find yourself on a steep incline. It reminds you how far commercial aviation has come. Meal carts? Nah, not for DC-3 "stewardesses." They carried meal trays one-by-one to each of the plane's 21 passengers. That must have been fun during turbulence.

This place features World War I and II-era aircraft, and its website says it's the only attraction in the world that offers daily aerial demonstrations.

For a price, pilots will take passengers for short flights on vintage aircraft. Not daring enough? For daredevils, a pilot will take you up in a Boeing Stearman PT-17, which has duelcontrols. The pilot will let you take the controls and fly the plane.